


Second Languages

by CloudCover (RainyForecast)



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, ESL struggles, Language Acquisition, M/M, Meet-Cute, new-to-the-NHL Geno, of sorts, referee Sid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-27 06:59:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15680343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainyForecast/pseuds/CloudCover
Summary: The only place he doesn’t feel alone is the moment after a goal at home.The rest of the time, all Zhenya can seem to feel is the ways he’s disconnected from everything else, English a yammering cadence he fishes scraps of meaning from like an exhausted prospector.I’m smart in Russian, he wants to tell them. I’m funny, in Russian. I’m all kinds of things.





	Second Languages

The only place he doesn’t feel alone is the moment after a goal at home. An entire city’s roar of approval, his teammates crashing into him, ecstatic shouts lost in a blur of sound that hits his chest like a blow. **  
**

The rest of the time, all Zhenya can seem to feel is the ways he’s disconnected from everything else, English a yammering cadence he fishes scraps of meaning from like an exhausted prospector.

 _I’m **smart**  in Russian,_ he wants to tell them, when his coach raises his voice to him like he’s talking to a child, or when he teammates snigger at whatever mismash of words that just came from his mouth. _I’m **funny** , in Russian. I’m all kinds of things._

His own teammates don’t mean it in a cruel way. He sees mostly amusement or confusion in their eyes, and they clap him on the back and invite him to eat with them with elaborate pantomimes that make his cheeks burn with embarrassment but also make him grateful. That they keep trying at all.

They have a reason to keep him happy, he supposes. He’s got the hope of the franchise laid heavy across his shoulders. The twenty-one year old Russian kid who defected to play for Super Mario, to try and drag the Penguins back from the brink.

Other teams, though? They’re nothing if not vicious. He knows enough English to understand just how bitter the vitriol spewed at him is. The better his hockey is, the worse it gets. He screams at them in return, the darkest curses he knows, and seethes when they just laugh. It’s just noise to them.

He can hold his rage back, most of the time. He fucking better, because he’s always angry on the ice these days.

But sometimes.

Like tonight. The NHL-sized ice is feeling particularly small, the insults thrown his way particularly scathing. They’re down by one. He’s just bought a house, and there’s nothing but too-empty rooms and a cold bed waiting for him when the game’s over.

“ Fucking big dumb ——-, go home to Russia”  is spit from a gap-toothed mouth, and he sees red. He barely gets his gloves off before he’s on the guy, whaling at him, the hapless asshole taking the form of all the myriad of hurts and frustrations he’s been facing.

He’s hit in return but he barely notices the stinging blows, doesn’t hear the whistle from the ref, or the bloodthirsty howling of the arena crowd.

He’s so lost in it that when a hand grabs his arm and yanks, he automatically throws his elbow back as hard as he can. There’s a sickening crunch, and a gutteral “uh!” and he half-turns only for his rage to drain from him as quickly as it came, leaving him shaky and sick. Fuck, he elbowed the fucking ref.

The ref’s down on one knee on the ice, holding onto his face, blood pouring from beneath his fingers. Zhenya stands over him, not sure what to do. The arena’s even louder now, and the other ref and the linesmen have arrived, and one of them’s grabbed his jersey to tow him to the box.

The ref he punched looks up, and all Zhenya can register besides  _blood_  is that he’s fucking young, Zhenya’s age or even younger. Zhenya didn’t know you could be an official that young. The ref swipes the back of his hand under his wrecked nose, and smiles. Fucking  _smiles_ , as if in reassurance.

As Zhenya is chivvied to the box, he keeps twisting around, trying to see if the ref gets up, how hurt he is.

Zhenya doesn’t  _like_  hurting people. He gets angry, but he doesn’t enjoy any part of it.

Guilt sits heavy and cold in his stomach. For punching the ref, for the disastrous penalty kill his team is forced to endure.

For the game itself, which they lose by three.

 

 

***

 

He gets a deserved dressing down from Coach Therrien, with Sergei pulled in to translate just so that Coach can get across how astronomically stupid Zhenya has been. He hunches his shoulders and takes it.

Coach ends his diatribe and eyes Zhenya coldly. “Back-to-back games," he says through Sergei. "Let’s see you try and fucking get your damn head straight for tomorrow night.”

Sergei doesn't include the swearing, but those words Zhenya understands with crystal clarity anyway. 

 

***

 

It’s late when Zhenya finally is able to leave the arena. There’s a cold, sharp wind blowing across the parking lot, and his hands fumble with his keys.

When he starts the car, his heart sinks at the idea of going home, alone. Not yet. He doesn’t want to go home yet. Not feeling this low. He doesn’t want to bring this miasma of self-recrimination home.

He doesn’t have a lot of options this late. But there’s a little cafe two blocks from the arena, that stays open late. He’ll go and get something to drink, sit under the fluorescents and try to…

He doesn’t know what.

 

***

 

The cafe is quiet. There are a couple guys at a table near the window and a tired barista, but that’s it. Zhenya comes here fairly often and the he knows how to order black tea with milk and sugar in it. He practiced.

He leans against the counter, feeling exhaustion settle in his bones.

“Rough night?” the barista askes. She has tattoos and a nose ring and doesn’t seem to recognize him. “What  ——- to your face?” She gestures at him.

Zhenya touches his cheekbone, which feels tender and hot. Probably bruised. He shrugs.

“Must be ———- going around,” she says with a laugh and a gesture towards the table of guys by the window. “You’re the ———- dude to come in here with a ———- face.”

Zhenya glances over his shoulder, and freezes. He’s not sure, not out of the striped shirt and black helmet, if it’s the ref he hit. How many guys can there be wandering around near Mellon Arena with bandaged noses in the middle of the night, though?

He feels a fresh wave of guilt. He’s wondering what to do, if he should go over and apologize, when the barista calls out (unnecessarily, he feels): “Large black tea for G?”

One of the guys glances up, does a double take, then whacks the shoulder of the guy with the bandaged nose so that he turns around. Zhenya stands there with his tea, unable to move. He feels his face flush with embarrassment.

It’s him, it has to be. Zhenya can see his eyes from here, the same clear, bright color he remembers from the ice. His black hair curls over his forehead and he has startlingly red lips, pretty as a girl’s.

Zhenya swallows, and makes himself move forward. Maybe apologizing will make him feel better.

He feels like he’s looming over their table, and he instinctively pulls his shoulders in, trying to take up less space, to make himself smaller.

“Sorry,” he manages. “For hit face. Not try to do.”

For all his nose is bandaged and swollen, the ref is still good-looking, and his smile is kind.

“I know,” he says. “I know how things get ———. Guy was ——— for you all night. Between you and me, he kinda ———- that punch.”

Zhenya blinks. He didn’t get all of that but the ref’s tone was sympathetic and commiserating. He fidgets with the cardboard sleeve of his to-go cup.

“Nose okay?” he asks. “Broke?”

“It’s not great?” the guy says, laughing a little, before wincing at the way it moves his nose. “I’ll be okay.”

“Should you two ——- be talking?” One of the guys at the table says. “We’re gonna ———the game tomorrow too, you know.”

The pretty ref shrugs. “Won’t tell if you won’t,” he tells Zhenya. He tugs out the unoccupied chair next to him. “Want to sit for a second?” His tone is a little anxious, overly casual, like he’s expecting Zhenya to say no. But Zhenya looks at the odd, hopeful light in his eyes and the gentle curve of his half-smile, and sits.

And that is now Zhenya ends up sitting in a cafe at 12:14 at night, drinking tea with the referees and linesmen of the game he just lost.

“Oh my god, Sid,” one of them says, and rolls his eyes at Zhenya’s ref. But Zhenya’s ref just flips his collegue off and turns to face Zhenya.

“I’m Sidney,” he says, offering his hand to shake.

“Evgeni,” Zhenya says, somehow wanting to hear his own name on those lips, not the nickname his agent had foisted upon him.

“Yev-geni,” Sidney repeats quietly, then smiles and introduces Zhenya to the other officials. Zhenya doesn’t bother to try and retain their names, but he nods politely at them in turn. They’re all a lot older than Sidney and he wonders again at his age.

“You…” he falters, not sure of the word. “Not old. Why?”

“You calling us old, ———?” one of the other officials sputters, and Zhenya flinches at the laughter. Sidney doesn’t laugh, just smiles again, still kindly.

“He’s a damn ———-” one of the older guys says, clapping Sidney on the shoulder. “Sid the kid. ————- referee in the ———- of the NHL.” There’s more laughter, and some chirping directed at Sid that Zhenya doesn’t catch.

Sidney rolls his eyes. “Don’t listen to them,” he tells Zhenya.

“Don’t worry,” Zhenya tells him. “Can’t understand English, so easy not hear stupid.” Sidney’s eyes widen and he practically cackles, eyes sparkling green and gold at Zhenya over his poor bandaged nose.

“That would be ——-” Sidney says, and his laughter doesn’t make Zhenya feel set apart. He laughs like Zhenya’s in on the joke.

“For fuck’s sake,” one of the linesmen says. “Keep it in your pants, Sid.” Sidney turns red and looks down at the table. Zhenya decides he doesn’t like the guy much.

Sidney mutters something noncommittal, and Zhenya has a ridiculous, sudden impulse to touch him. A hand on his shoulder or a nudge with his foot. Or.

Well. He’s very beautiful.

Sidney catches Zhenya’s gaze, and makes a wry face, wrinkling his nose and then flinching.

“Sorry,” Zhenya says again, softly, just for Sidney to hear. The other guys are already talking amongst themselves.

“Not the first time I’ve been hit in the face doing this, won’t be the last,” Sid says, and shrugs. “Part of the job.”

Zhenya wants to ask him about that, about how he became a ref at such a young age. He wants to ask him all kinds of things, but he feels afraid of his poor English. He has the strangely sure feeling that Sidney would be kind about it, and yet.

Before he makes his excuses and leaves, he takes a risk. He pulls off the cardboard sleeve of his drink, and covertly uses one of his omnipresent Sharpies to scrawl his cell number on it, hidden under the table where the others can’t see. He slides it into Sidney’s palm.

Sidney jumps, then looks down at his hands, then blushes. Deeply. The shy look he gives Zhenya makes Zhenya feel warm and light, and he walks out of the cafe feeling better than he has in weeks.

 

***

 

 _So, your number, huh?_  Is waiting on his phone when he gets home.

 _Can translate on phone_  he answers.  _Talk more._

 _I have no idea if this is a ———- of ————_  Sidney responds.

Zhenya looks up “conflict” and “interest,” and his heart sinks.  _Like you_  he confesses. There’s a pause.

 _I like you too_ Sidney replies, and Zhenya lets out a whoop that echoes through his empty foyer.

 _I’m still going to —— your ass to the box if you pull any bullshit_ Sidney says, but adds a smiling emoji.

 _Fine))))_  Zhenya sends back. _No penalty play best_

 _:D_ Sidney sends back.

The game the following night is without major incident. Zhenya is only a little distracted by Sidney’s powerful, tireless skating and his  _revelation_  of an ass in those black referee slacks.

Zhenya is self aware enough to know he’s a show-off, and he nets two goals in his effort to impress Sidney. He searches for him over the shoulders of his teammates during the celly for his second goal. Sidney glides by, a smile playing about his lips.

Zhenya feels elated about more than the goal.

 

***

 

The shut-out win and the fact that they have a rest day tomorrow means that the team wants to go out. Zhenya’s all for it. He loves dancing. And nobody expects scintillating conversation in a club, anyway.

 _We go club tonight_  he sends to Sidney.  _You come_

Forgetting the question mark sounds a little pushy, he realizes too late. He doesn’t expect Sidney to agree, but wonder of wonders, he does.

 _Ok_  he sends. _I can’t dance but it —— be fun._

Might be? Zhenya’s going to make sure it is.

 

***

 

Even though Sidney said he’d come, Zhenya isn’t quite sure he will until he gets a text that he’s in line. Zhenya goes to fetch him and Sidney rolls his eyes at Zhenya walking him past the velvet ropes with a nod to the bouncer.

“Mr. Bigshot, huh?” Sidney laughs, and Zhenya grins back at him, feeling shivery with excitement .

“Yes, am most big,” he says innocently, just to watch Sid blush deep red and try to act like he doesn’t notice the innuendo.

Zhenya snickers. His English is shit but not  _that_  shit.

Zhenya goes to get Sidney a drink, but Sidney shakes his head. “I’m only twenty,” he half-yells over the throb of the music. “I can’t drink here yet.” Zhenya gives him a look. Not like being underage stopped Zhenya last year, but Sid holds firm. “A Coke, please,” he tells the bartender. The insistence on following the rules paired with the cute, stubborn set of his jaw is too much. Zhenya wants to wreck him.

Sidney sips at his Coke while Zhenya leans into his space and tries to follow his stream of talk, with only limited success. He gives up after a while and just ends up staring at Sidney’s lips, watching them purse around his words.

He realizes with a start that they’ve stopped moving. He quickly brings his gaze back up but Sidney is silently staring at him, his eyes dark and inscrutable under the neon wash of the club lights.

Carefully, deliberately, Sidney sets down his glass. Zhenya moves even closer, so that Sidney has to tilt his head back a little to look at him. Sidney seems to weigh his options for a long, excruciating moment, then inclines his head towards the dance floor.

Zhenya grins.

 

***

 

He doesn’t need English to pull Sidney into the darkest corner of the club, and doesn’t need English to understand the way his mouth falls open when Zhenya settles his hands on Sidney’s hips, pulling him too close to leave any doubts as to what he wants. To understand what it means when Sidney turns to lean back into his chest and let his head fall onto Zhenya’s shoulder.

Zhenya doesn’t need English to tug him into a cab with him, to take him home, to suck possessive bruises into his pale skin.

To understand his own name cried out in ecstasy when Sidney comes.

 

***

 

The next morning, Zhenya wakes up and just watches Sidney for a while. He looks so good in Zhenya’s bed, all smooth, pale muscle and tousled dark curls. He gives in to the tenderness welling up in his throat and presses a line of gentle kisses up Sidney’s spine to his shoulders.

Sidney stirs, and mumbles something unintelligible before blinking his eyes open. Zhenya can see the moment his brain wakes up enough to register where he is and remember what they did last night. A spike of fear goes through him. He doesn’t want to see that look turn into regret, or disgust.

He rolls them, and plasters himself to Sidney, burying his face in the join of his neck and shoulder. Hiding his face.  _Please_ , he wants to say.  _Don’t wish we hadn’t done this. Don’t leave me even emptier than I was._

He feels Sidney reach up to card his fingers softly though Zhenya’s hair. “Good morning,” he says, voice sleep rough, tone soothing, as though he can understand that Zhenya’s upset about something. They stay like that for a long moment, Sid still stroking Zhenya’s hair, Zhenya still afraid to look up.

When Zhenya finally raises his face, Sidney smiles at him. Soft, and warm. Zhenya’s insides feel achy. He wants to wake up to that smile again.

“You okay?” Sidney asks.

“Feel bad?” Zhenya says.

Sidney frowns a little. “No. You?”

“ _No_ ,” Zhenya says emphatically. “You like?”

“The sex?” Sidney asks. “Sex with you?” At Zhenya’s nod, he reaches out to touch Zhenya’s face. Zhenya leans into his palm like a cat. He’s not sure what’s wrong with him. It’s like he’s starving for touch.

“It was awesome,” Sidney says, then blushes, which is hilarious, as they’re both  _naked together in bed_.

Zhenya lets out a long, shuddering sigh, and with it a lot of the tension he’d been feeling. He snuggles back down into Sidney.

Sidney laughs. “You’re not what I expected.” But he throws an arm around Zhenya’s shoulders to pull him even closer. “ ———- ————-,” he says affectionately, and gropes one-handedly for his phone when Zhenya makes a confused noise.

“Прижиматься монстр,” Google Translate informs him, and Zhenya snorts. Well. A weird way to put things, but not inaccurate. He’s reveling in how Sidney is letting himself be held. Zhenya’s had a lot of partners that haven’t liked his octopus tendencies but Sid doesn’t seem to mind at all.

“My flight is at noon,” Sidney says, stroking a hand down Zhenya’ back, then back up to tangle through the hair at Zhenya’s nape. He sounds regretful.

“We do again?” Zhenya asks. “Text? Talk on Skype?” Too much, he thinks. Too much, too fast. But he doesn’t want to let Sidney go.

Sidney hums. “If you want. I know you have to be careful. But, uh. I. I really like you?”

Zhenya raises himself up on his elbows, so he can look at Sidney’s face. There’s that blush, again.

“Yes,” Zhenya says fervently. “Yes, yes,  _yes_.” He punctuates his words with kisses until Sidney is laughing and even redder than before.

 

***

 

Zhenya sends him off at the door with a travel mug of coffee. He takes smug satisfaction at the Pens logo emblazoned across it.

Sidney kisses his cheek, then just looks at him, as if he wants to commit Zhenya to memory, ratty sleep pants and bedhead included.

“I’ll be back in Pittsburgh next month,” Sidney promises, and Zhenya feels happy enough to burst.

 

***

 

Two hours later, he gets a text from Sidney: a photo of the plane’s wing as it sits on the runway, then a screenshot of Sid’s phone, some app with a green owl on it.

Привет Sidney texts him. Как дела?

Maybe not so alone after all, Zhenya thinks.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me as [knifeshoeoreofight](http://knifeshoeoreofight.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr, and as @RainyForecast on Twitter. Come say hi!


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